Comments at length on the evolutionary significance of Robert McDonnell's investigations ["On an organ in the skate", Nat. Hist. Rev. (1861): 57–60].

Transcription

Down Bromley Kent

Nov. 24th

My dear Lyell

I thank you much for your letter. I had got to take pleasure
in thinking how I could best snub my Reviewers; but I was determined in any case to
follow your advice, & before I had got to the end of your letter I was convinced
of the wisdom of your advice. What an advantage it is to me to
have such friend as you.— I shall follow every hint in your letter
exactly.—

I have just heard from Murray; he says he sold 700 copies at his sale,
& that he has not half the number to supply; so that I must begin at once. But I will & must finish my Drosera M.S. which
will take me a week, for at this present moment I care more about Drosera than the
origin of all the species in the world. But I will not publish on Drosera till next
year, for I am frightened & astounded at my results.— I declare it is a certain fact, that one organ is so sensitive to
touch that a weight of 1/78,000 of a grain (ie seventy-eight times less
weight than that, viz 11000 of a grain, which will move the best chemical balance) suffices to cause
conspicuous movement.— Is it not curious that a plant
shd be far more sensitive to a touch than any nerve in the human body!
Yet I am perfectly sure that this is true.— When I am on my hobby-horse, I
never can resist telling my friends, how well my hobby goes, so you must forgive the
rider.—

Farewell my wisest & best of Lord Chancellors.

Yours most truly obliged | C. Darwin

Etty goes on pretty well. All the Doctors say any rapid progress is
impossible.—

All this dreadful illness for last six months (& that wicked dear little
Drosera) has made any progress in my larger Book almost nothing—

P.S. I must tell you one little fact which has pleased me. You may remember
that I adduce Electrical Organs of Fish, as one of the greatest difficulties which had
occurred to me, & Owen notices the passage in a singularly disingenous
spirit. Well Mc.Donnell of Dublin (first rate
man) writes to me that he felt the difficulty of whole case as overwhelming against
me. Not only are the fishes which have electric organs very
remote in scale; but the organ is near Head in some & near tail in others
& supplied by wholly different nerves.— It seems
impossible that there could be any transition.

Some friend who is much opposed to me seems to have crowed over
Mc.Donnell, who reports that he said to himself that if Darwin is right
there must be homologous organs both near the Head & Tail in other non-electric
fish. He set to work & by Jove he has found them. So that some of difficulty is
removed, & is it not satisfactory that my hypothetical notions
shd have lead to pretty discovery. Mc.Donnell seems very
cautious; he says years must pass before he will venture to call himself a believer in
my doctrine; but that on the subjects which he knows well viz morphology &
embryology my views accord well & throw light on whole subject.—

CD refers to the new, third edition of Origin, which John Murray had called
for. See letters to T. H. Huxley, 22 November [1860], and to
John Murray, 22 [November 1860].

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f4 2996.f4

In fact, CD delayed publication until 1875, when Insectivorousplants appeared. He did, however, read a paper on the subject at a meeting of
the Philosophical Club of the Royal Society in February 1861
(Bonney 1919, p. 154). See also letter to Daniel Oliver,
16 November [1860].

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f5 2996.f5

The passage was rather in Samuel Wilberforce's anonymous review of Origin
([Wilberforce] 1860, p. 246). Wilberforce had been primed on the scientific
objections to CD's views by Richard Owen. The passage reads, in part: `We see no
possible solution on the Darwinian theory for the presence at once so marked and so
exceptional of these organs.' Wilberforce went on to state that CD's confession of
ignorance was `a solution which could of course equally make the scheme it is intended
to serve compatible with any other contradiction.' There is an annotated copy of
[Wilberforce] 1860 in the Darwin Pamphlet Collection--CUL.

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f6 2996.f6

The letter from Robert M'Donnell has not been found, but see the letters to
T. H. Huxley, 16 November [1860] and 22 November
[1860].